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AN ORATION 



HEFORE 



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OF 



Vermont Officers 



IN THE 



Representatives' Hall, Montpelier, Vt., 



NOVEMBER 7th, 1872, 



Bv COL. SAMUEL E. PIISTGEEE, 

HARTFORD, VT. 



MONTPELIER : 
POLANDS' STEAM PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 

187-2. 



AN ORATION 



BEFORE 



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OF 



Vermont Officers, 



IN THE 



Representatives' Hall, Montpelier, Yt., 

NOVEMBER 7th, 1872, 

By col. SAMUEL E. PI]^GEEE, 

HARTFORD, VT. 



MONTPELIER: 
PoiiANDs' Steam Printing Establishment. 

1872. 



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MINUTES 



MoNTPELiER, Vermont, Nov. 7, 1872. 

The ninth animal meeting- of the Vermont OflBcers' Re- 
union Society was held at the State House, at 10 o'clock, 
A. M. 

After the transaction of the routine business it was, after 
considerable discussion, unanimously 

Resolved, That non-commissioned officers be and hereby 
are invited to join this society under the same conditions as 
commissioned officers. 

The question of the location of the next Re-union recur- 
ring, a ballot was taken and the Executive committee were 
instructed to call the same at Brattleboro, in October, 1873. 

The Committee on nominations reported, and the Society 
elected the following officers for the year ensuing : 

Presidenf,, — Col. Redfield Proctor, Rutland. 

Viei' Presidents, — Gen. Wm. W. Henry, Burlington, Col. 
Thos. 0. Seaver, Proctorsville. 

Treasurer, — Gen. P. P. Pitkin, Montpelier. 

Recording Secretary, — Maj. James S. Peck, Montpelier. 

Corresponding Secretary,— hi. John C. Stearns, Bradford. 

Executive Committee, — Lt. Kittredge Haskins, Brattle- 
boro, Capt. Richard Smith, Timbridge, Capt. Samuel E. 
Burnham, Rutland. 



The report of the Treasurer, showing a deficit of $11.39, 
was presented and ordered on file. 

After the appointment of Gen. Wm. W. He:nry as Marshal, 
the Society adjourned till evening, when its members 
marched to the State House to hear the address ))y Colonel 
Samuel E. Pingree, of Hartford. 

On motion, the thanks of the Society were tendered to 
Col. PiNGUEE for his able and interesting address, and a 
copy of the same was requested for publication. 

Lieut. Benedict announced the death of Maj. Gen. George 
G. Mkade, and oflered resolutions eulogistic of his charac- 
ter and services, which were unanimously adopted. 

The Society proceeded to the Pavilion to discuss the good 
things prepared for it, and supper, toasts, speeches and rem- 
iniscences filled the time till the small hours, when it ad- 
journed by singing Auld Lang Syne. 

JAMES S. PECK, Secretary. 



ORATION. 



Mr. President, Comrades and Fellow Citizens: — To 
be summoned by your Executive Committee to the duty of 
addressing my comrades and fellow citizens uj)on the occa- 
sion of this, our ninth annual re-union, after these occa- 
sions have been honored by the eloquence of divines, and of 
statesmen, and of soldiers true and tried, bestirs in me, as 
it well might, a degree of embarrassment and solicitude, 
which, as on those occasions which we are here to commemo- 
rate, a candid sense and appreciation of duty alone must 
guide and sustain me through. 

In the unrepublican governments of the older world, the 
discharge of the soldier from his profession may be consid- 
ered his discharge from duty, but in the United States of 
America it is not so ; with us the muster-out redevolves upon 
us those ennobling duties and responsibilities of the citizen, 
which our soldiership held only in a temporary abeyance. 

One of these duties, and prominent among them for the 
fostering of those sacred virtues which guard with watchful- 
ness and with wisdom the best interests of the State, — and 
which, at least while any of this generation shall remain, 
will contribute to their security — is the duty of keeping 
green and sacred in our hearts the memories of those of our 
comrades who died in war that we might live in peace ; the 



duty of keeping green and sacred in our hearts, the memo- 
ries and the deeds of those who offered, as well as of those 
who made upon the altar of their country the noblest and 
holiest sacrifice that ever falls to the part of the brave to 
offer or to make — the sacrifice of life, that their country 
might continue to have a name and a place among the com- 
monwealths of the earth. 

This is one of the primary objects of our Association. 
In the fulfillment of this object, we impulsively recall with 
what measure of astonishment we listened to the early notes 
of the trumpet of war. The emotions which then thrilled 
our souls seem to come back to us again, though not with 
all their bewildering amazements, and the indefinite and 
undefinal)le forecasts from the starting point in the spring 
time of eighteen hundred and sixty-one, are now recollected 
as tlie school-day experiences of a people untaught in the 
science of arms. 

To recall some of the incidents growing out of the deep 
labyrinth of mysteries, of fears, of hopes, and of that de- 
termined patriotism which moved the nation's heart on the 
threshold of tiiat " impending conflict," and which called 
into being that great barrier to treason and the nation's ruin, 
I have chosen for the subject of my address to you to- 
night "The Army of the Potomac," purposing to refer only 
to some of the circumstances in which it had its origin, and 
to the period of its organization. 

It was with the infant history of this army that many of 
us were early identified. It was through its great subse- 
quent history that most of us shared its discipline, its strug- 
gles, its achievements, and its devotion to the nation. It 
was through its " days of labor, and nights devoid of ease," 
that that great company, who now swell the vast bivouac of 



the nation's dead, were taken from our raijks, as offerings 
for the nation's purification. 

We are now in the midst of a period of calm reflection, 
and can look back to the past from the stand-point of peace- 
ful days. 

When the eventful scenes of 1861 burst upon us, wc were 
living under the government established by Washington. Men 
were then among us whose memory and whose history were 
in part cntcmporary with his. Under the benign opportu- 
nities and influences of that government, our civilization had 
pressed across the continent to the shores of the peaceful sea. 
Peaceful enterprise had knitted together the remote States 
and cities with an almost interminable net-work of highways, 
and post-roads, and railways, and telegraph lines. Peace- 
ful enterprise had penetrated the inland lakes and the 
rivers with almost countless lines of water craft. Peaceful 
enterprise had filled up the wilderness with a teeming popu- 
lation of thirty millions of people, going forward with all 
the customary pursuits of civilized life. Peaceful enterprise 
had developed the mechanical arts and the manufactures, 
and the fine arts had been adorned. Peaceful enterprise 
had developed that genius which gave life to our commerce 
and brought it into successful rivalry with the maritime 
nations of the older world. Peaceful enterprise had given 
life to that skill and cunning which published and fashioned 
to the use of mankind the recondite agencies of steam 
power. Peaceful virtues had disseminated education among 
the masses, adorned the pursuits of sacred science, and so 
enlarged the missionary operations and successes as to in- 
vite the plaudits of the Christian world. Peaceful philan- 
throphy, under the" fostering care of a government so gentle, 
had invited the oppressed of Europe to participate with us 
in these felicities. War seemed to be remembered no more, 



8 

while peace had contributed to the full, rounded measure 
of our greatness, attained within the memory of men who 
yet lived. 

Guided as if with an Unseen Hand, our people had gone 
forward on a mission of prosperity, philanthropy, and felic- 
ity, unexampled in the world's history. Our ships of com- 
merce were floating upon the oceans and in every sea, and 
the kings, and princes, and merchants of all lands did rever- 
ence and homage to our flag. How naturally were all our 
energies, our hopes, and our expectations turned into the 
gentle channels of these arts of peace. How foreign to 
our sentiments, how estranged from our interests, how 
unnatural to our intelligence, became the rude calculations 
of humancst war. Separated from all the entangling com- 
binations of the older nations by the broad ocean, har- 
mony, policy, liumanity, and interest limited us to only a 
liberal and peaceful intercourse with them. 

With such a status, and with the open pages of our fathers' 
history before us, the tender accents of their counsels still 
lingering in our memories, and seeing all around us the 
teeming fruits of their deeds of wisdom and of statesman- 
ship — the offspring of a half century of almost undisturbed 
repose, — could we loolc forward to the possibility of the 
need of mighty armies to save our government from dismem- 
berment and ruin ? 

That this republic, so singularly blest of heaven — this 
empire, so young, and yet so marvellous in its benificence 
to the human race — so wonderful in the grandeur of its re- 
sources, and so exalted in its relations with fellow States — 
that this republic must purchase her perpetuity by the mar- 
shaling of her sons in war's dread array, was a lesson which 



9 

her statesmen, her scholars, her people must be trained to 
learn amid experiment, peril, and confusion. 

Without the sad, yet fruit-bearing lessons in the school of 
disaster, her peace-trained people would have poorly esti- 
mated the magnitude of the approaching storm. With- 
out the sad yet fruitful lessons in the school of dis- 
aster, no sublime forecast of her sages could have organized 
results from combination. Oratory in her golden circles of 
expressive words yielded to the majesty of patriotism, but 
knew not how to direct it. Philosophy acknowledged its 
controlling might and was silent. Poetry only dared to 
twine her fairest laurels for its In-ow, while all human states- 
manship and all human wisdom seemed inadequate to com- 
prehend the magnitude of the task before us. Our president 
professed reliance on the better angels of peace. Our 
eminent state secretary prophetically assured us that 
three score days should bring us sunnier skies and a more 
cheerful atmosphere, while grave senators could hardly wait 
the in-gathering of the first faint levy of undisciplined 
troops to see the rebellion ended. The press took up the 
key-note of offensive action, and the public mind was be- 
guiled into the contemplation of sounding peans of exulta- 
tion over a prostrated rebellion. 

Was there any difference between an unorganized body of 
troops moving on to attack an enemy of unknown force, in- 
trenched in chosen position, and in standing on the defens- 
ive behind these intrenchments ? Such calculations seemed 
to be held in contempt. 

The venerable Scott, the great captain of his age, was 
consulted, and, rising in the majesty of his years, he shook 
his gray head iu disapprobation of an advance, until the 
uniraiued legions were converted into soldiers. But 

2 



10 

the impulse of the popular heart must be appeased 
bv the venture, and the nation doomed to disappointment, 
for the possibility of defeat had been entertained by none. 
The President was as illy prepared to comprehend the 
realities of the houi-, and as powerless of that genius 
which was necessary to meet them, as his cal)inet, tlie 
statesman, the press, or the people. 

Our long devotion at the shrine of Peace had committed 
our judgments against all the needed plans and preparations 
for a rebellion so gigantic, and the severe discipline of dis- 
aster must initiate the nation's eftbrt to save the State. 
The startling shock of unsuccessful battle is needed to 
enlighten, to exalt, and to direct the irrepressil)le patriotism 
of a people so thoughtless of the magnitude of the nation's 
salvation. 

Scott, remonstrating with the warning voice of his famil- 
iar science, nevertheless yields to the demands of the pop- 
ular impatience — and the army of Gen. McDowell is moved 
from Arlington, on Manassas, with little of the circumstance 
and method of trained battalions, and returns with none. . 

Of the necessity of that brief, disastrous campaign for 
the disciplinary affliction of the nation's heart, i have spukeu. 
Of the magnitude of the shock to the nation's sense, of 
the strangeness of the gloom which it overcast, of the dis- 
grace to our arms, the demoralization, the loute, the panic, 
it is sufficient, comrades, to say of them, we never had occa- 
sion to look upon the like again. 

Yet disaster, route and panic though it was, and freighted 
with responsibilities to startle and arouse, nevertheless it 
left us with its rich heritage of instruction ; it opened the 
public heart to a rectified sense of tlie powerlessness of 
misdirected patriotism ; it warned the pul)lic mind that to 



11 

set upon the task before us without the preparatory disci- 
pline which all history dictates for a starting point, would 
result in failure. '' Who," asks the historian, " will ven- 
ture to measure the consequences of actions, by the apparent 
humiliation in which they have their origin?" 

Tlie mysterious influences of that Power wliich enchains 
the destinies of nations, over-ruling tiie mandates of sover- 
eigns and the forethought of statesmen, often eliminate the 
greatest events from the least commanding causes. 
That over-ruling Providence, who had led the fathers 
amid tlie storms and in the sunshine, and through persecu- 
tion to success, testing their patience, and fortifying their 
virtues amid sorrow and reverse, fitting them for the 
sacred responsibilities of self government — that Providence, 
through this dark disguise of our humility, was pointing out 
to us the grandeur of our duties, and directing us to the 
perfection of those great combinations essential to their 
performance. 

As we look back now with the light of experience to 
direct our view, as we contemplate the trifling proportions 
which the peace-trained president, and statesman, and peo- 
ple accorded to a rebellion so stupendous, can we claim 
that almost any price of disaster was too great to secure to 
us the boon of instruction which the event inculcated ? 

Thus the early and ill-conceived preparations for the con- 
flict vanished in a single spasm, and the government turned 
to the contemplation of graver responsibilities, and to a sys- 
tem of preparation commensurate, in some degree, to the 
vast proportions of the work before them. 

Fixed and defined opinions and plans upon all subjects 
connected with the raising, the organizing, and tlie patient 
disciplining of great armies, and clearer views upon the 



12 

general conduct of vast military operations, were now re- 
vealed in the clear light of the nation's necessities. 

The veteran lieutenant-general, with head crowned white 
with the frost of age, "'bending under infirmities incurred 
in his country's service while carrying her flagoverso many 
fields of victory," endows his comrades with the beacon 
lights of his experience and wisdom, and lays down his 
sword forever. 

To what hands now, tried or untried, shall the great trust 
be committed — the great trust of moulding the character 
and shaping the future of the grand military and naval com- 
binations and operations on which the national being now 
hung trembling in the lialance against secession ? 

But yesterday the united nation was wanting in none of 
the resources of the first order of military scholars — to-day 
she might see the alumni of her academy, ''with an ingrati- 
tude more strong than traitors' arms," arrayed against their 
Alma Mater. 

Next to Scott, and now first in what remained of loyalty 
on the army roster, stood the name of the youthful, though 
not inexperienced soldier, McClellan. 

Ripe in the perfection of the varied learning of the pro- 
fession — though but just entered upon the threshold of mid- 
dle life — he had added thereto the lessons of experience in 
the great campaign of victories under his predecessor from 
Vera Cruz to the Chapultepec, and with the allied armies 
of France and Britain from the Alma to Sevastopol ; and 
as if to endear himself to the American heart with 
an almost inordinate confidence, he hail planned and exe- 
cuted that series of brilliant victories in the Kanawha 
valley, which secured to West Virginia her state sover- 
eignty, and a new star to the constellation of states. 



13 

"While a strange fatality seemed to attend upon the steps 
of all others," says a cotemporary, "in his department we 
had never lost a battle." The President and the people 
called him witii one voice from beyond the munntains, to 
set upon the hazardous task uf havlnti; and securing the ca{)- 
ital, and of creating from the ingathering masses of citizen 
soldiers an army which should go forth to battle the enemy, 
without the possibility of a repeated disaster to our arms. 

Never in history did the common heart of a great pco[)le 
turn with a warmer impnlse of aft'ection or a more un- 
bounded trust on any, than did the people of his country on 
General McClellan. AmJ it was with the hand of a master 
that he entered upon his great undertaking. At no other 
period amid the manifold seasons of tiial and perplexity, 
which continued to recur until our government had 
assumed the .<<tatus of a war power — at no other period 
could the mantle of deeper trust, of weightier responsibil- 
ity, or of more varied and erabarrast-ing duty, have fallen 
upon tlie shoulders of any chief. 

The resources of men — brave and devoted men — were 
gatheiing to the camps on the l)anks of the Potomac, but 
the vast material of an army was wanting, and its calcula- 
tion was the work (^f genius and its [)rocurement the work 
of time. 

The ordering of camps of discipline and instruction, the 
daily drill and preparation, and whatever pertained to the 
evolution and regularity of great oi'ganizations, constituted 
the- least considerable of the momentous responsibilities of 
the commander-in-chief 

The ultimate mission of this army was not merely the de- 
fense of the national capital, but, for the great impinging 
force, looking forward to the ultimate defeat and destruc- 



14 

tion of its counterpart, tlie o;reat confederate army of Virginia. 
That objective point once attained and the rebellion was 
sure to go down forever. In the plan for the sui-e fulfill- 
ment of this mission there were other considerations to en- 
gage the attention of the responsible head, besides, and far 
reaching beyond, the purpose of winning a single battle. 

That this army, which was destined to be regarded by the 
nation as the wall of adamant for the shielding of the cap- 
ital, and the military center of the combined operations for 
the restoration of the Union — tiiat it should be prepared 
for all the vicissitudes and varied fortunes incident to the 
great campaigns of history, all the circumstances of the 
strength and preparation of the enemy most clearly im- 
pressed. 

With the vast advantages which their defensive attitude 
afforded, and which numbers were hardly adequate to over- 
come — with a i^eople as thoroughly united in resistance to 
our arms as tlie loyal States of the North in behalf of the 
Union, — with an army as brave, as fearless and as demoted 
as any in 'history — that army commanded by a general of 
the first order of the military genius of the time, sup))orted 
by the consummate skill and valor of such lieutenants as 
Hill and Longstreet and Jackson, — no single defeat could de- 
stroy, nor any single disaster appall tliem. 

For the repeated defeat and ultimate destruction of this 
grand confederate power, amid all the disadvantages inci- 
dent to campaigns and invasions, all the skill, the valor, the 
discipline, the energies and the ojoerations of the Army of 
the Potomac and its commanders must be directed. 

To win victories must l)e the aim — to turn repulse to the 
account of luturc battles must evidence its self confidence 
and its tuiyielding devotion. 



15 

While undergoing t';e long and laborious process of dis- 
cipline and prc[)aration for a responsibility so fraught with 
events and so big with tlie fate of free institutions, we cal- 
culated not, nor could we then conceive, their great import- 
ance to our success in the more trying realities of war. 

That our army should grow into shape so slowly — that with 
a proud and defiant enemy in our front we should be kept 
upon the work of fortfying tlie capital in lieu of attempting 
to raise the siege by battle, were circumstances as trying to 
the patience of the soldiery of that army as to the people 
of the country. That in the events developed as the scheme 
of war passed into history, this disciplinary period was 
sufficiently brief for the purposes in hand, the future his- 
torian will never question. 

Thus under the national depression attendant upon the 
late disaster in the Manassas campaign, in the face of a vic- 
torious and exultant enemy, the citizens of the North, 
schooled only in the peaceful arts, many of them never hav- 
ing seen an implement ol' war nor listened to a martial 
strain, and with scarcely the nucleus of an organization 
around which to form, in the brief space of seven months 
are converted into one of the best ordered and disciplined 
armies of modern history. 

They found the -capital of their government naked and 
defenseless, and the hearts of her chosen rulers failing them 
from fear. They walled that city round about with vast 
cordons of defenses, and with an intelligent forecast which 
providently surveyed the requirements of an expectant peo- 
ple, they did not forget that there was a power to destroy 
as well as a city to save. 

At length the army was in readiness to take the field. 
The enemv, snuffing the battle from afar, and foreseeing 



16 

that the conflicts which should determine the fate of their 
confederate empire would be inaugurated before the confed- 
erate capital, had surrounded it and every avenue of its ap- 
proach with a network of defences, and had summoned 
thither their late ojf'enHive army for the purpose of defensive. 
warfare, and the scene is changed from tlic camps of dis- 
cipline on the Potomac to the battle fields of the Peninsula. 

And here, on the threshold, as it were, of those Titanic 
struggles which were almost constantly testing the skill and 
valor of these confronting armies through the three years that 
followed, was immifest the inestimnl)le vnluo of discipline 
bestowed, the worth to the nation of the months devoted to 
preparation, the self-sustaining contidence infused into the 
various departments in this their baptismal experience in 
the realities of war. 

To single out a sjiecitic field more illustrious for comment 
than any other, where, with scarcely an interval of repose, 
the deadly struggle culminated in the classical week of bat- 
tles, would seem invidious. The enthusiasm and heroic de- 
votion which the men of that army carried into the perform- 
ance of every duty devolving upon them in that memorable 
campaign, surpasses all ordinary description. 

Recall the willing toil, the nightly march and watch amid 
the storms violent beyond precedent in that vast morass, the 
bivouac before the long line of intrenchments, the ceaseless 
crashing of shot and shell through the arching forests which 
concealed our advancing parallels before Yorktown, the un- 
complaining hands that turned so cheerfully from the rifle to 
the axe or the spade and back again to the deadly skirmish, 
the bold assaults through the entangled streams and upon 
positions of unknown resisting force, the sublime exhibitions 
of indift'erence to individual fate, while disease was making 



17 

one vast graveyard of that peninsula, — yet no heart falters 
and no tongue complains. 

It was now less than a twelve-month since these citizen 
soldiers were in the undisturbed avocations of their varied 
peaceful duties, having no forecast of the great contribu- 
tion they were to furnish to the historic material of the 
greatest insurrection of this or any age. It was less than 
a twelve-month since all were sharing the felicities of their 
pastoral and metropolitan homes, mingled in the scenes of all 
the arts and pursuits which adorn and ennoble an enlight- 
ened people. Go back through the long catalogue of the 
chronicles of war, to the first syllable of recorded time, 
and we look for but do not find a parallel to this. 

The cause which had sped them on to this fitting stage of 
preparation was the cause of free government, and its suc- 
cess the world's last hope of freedom's permanence. 

Those men were not unfamiliar with the glorious historic 
record of their ancestry, nor of the correct interpretation 
of the constitution and government which had been intrusted 
to their guardianship. Obedience to that constitution and 
the preservation of the unity of the multiplied iStates was 
the burden of their patriotism and their devotion. 

Dissimilar to any of the great armies of the world which 
had come and gone before them, they "waited not on the 
smiles of princes nor basked in the noon-tide of royal 
favor." Their faith was drawn from the inspiration of the 
oracles of the sagacious Washington, the eloquent Adams, 
the philosophical Franklin, and the peerless Hamilton, the 
pole star of whose ambition was to establish, to preserve 
and to perpetuate, undimmed and undiminished, the rising 
constellation of states. 



18 

As those sages of the revolutionary period had devoted 
their lives and honor to the foundation and framework of 
this building, so did these men, their children, devote their 
lives and honor against the fatal heresy, the mad passion, 
which now sought to tear the sti-ucture down. Ever mind- 
ful of the conflicts amid which the Union was born, they 
stopped not to calculate the cost of its preservation, but 
earnestly and solemnly devoted themselves to this war's last 
resort to save their heritage of freedom from dissolution. 

Too little has been understood and appreciated by those 
who wei-e not of them of this ruling spirit which animated 
that noble body of American soldiers, — their steadfastness 
for the sovereignty of their cardinal principle, the indissolu- 
ble unity of the states, their fealty to that principle through 
adversity and suftering and in the shadow of death, attested 
by a faith in its ultimate vindication, as sublime amid re- 
verse as in the hour of triumph — a faith by which they 
sometimes fought, as in the tangled copse of the wilderness, 
more than by sight, and which guided and sustained them 
throughout the varying fortunes of their four years of mili- 
tary life, and until the great object of their devotion was 
crowned with success and the Union vindicated. 

it was that ruling spirit, that intelligent faith in the ulti- 
mate vindication of the government for which they fought, 
that inspired them to the performance of those deeds of sol- 
dierly grandeur which have allotted to them their peculiar 
place, high on the roll of the great historic armies of the 
world. 



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